This story was originally published by Daily Montanan.
Jordan Hansen
Daily Montanan
A film festival geared toward showing “uplifting” movies and shorts is coming to Big Sky this weekend.
It’s the first year for the Lone Peak Film Festival in Big Sky, which will have six feature films and 16 shorts. The event will also include a mentorship program for local Native American filmmakers.
Feature films include “Bring Them Home (Aiskótáhkapiyaaya),” “Lost Wolves of Yellowstone,” “Champions of the Golden Valley,” “Runa Simi,” “Sing Sing” and “Cutting Through the Rocks.”
The festival starts on Friday, Sept. 19, and runs through Sunday, Sept. 21, with a mixture of free and paid events throughout the weekend.
“They’re all uplifting. So they all focus a light on the good in humanity. There’s no denying that there’s a lot of bad stuff going on,” said Daniel Glick, who helped found the festival. “But we also want to highlight that there are a lot of people who are trying to make the world a bit more sane and healthy, too.”
The film festival is also in part sponsored by the state Department of Commerce, and Montana has long been a home for filmmakers. The state passed legislation earlier this year to extend a film tax credit and also sought to fix a problem, which was film tax credits getting sucked up by large productions, namely “Yellowstone.”
Senate Bill 326 brought by Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, sought to address the issue. It had a somewhat dramatic path before being signed by Gov. Greg Gianforte — the bill was killed and revived and drew significant floor discussion. It also was one of the final bills the legislature passed during the 2025 session.
“We need the big guys, but more importantly, we need the little guys, too, to make sure that they grow and prosper,” Hertz said in a House Taxation committee meeting on April 15. “And it all works out for Montana. We also have additional incentives to hire veterans and Native Americans into the bill.”
SB 326 will provide $12 million per year to the film industry in Montana, and some of that money will go to Montana production companies and small filmmakers. The bill also extended the tax credit until 2045.
Movie productions are incredibly expensive, said Glick, who described a film he wants to shoot on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. The problem is, he said, without production credits, it’s hard to find investors, and he may be forced to shoot a film across the border in Canada.
“There’s a huge, huge appetite for people to make films here, like locals, every filmmaker in Montana that I know wants to make multiple films in Montana … all of them have stories set here in Montana. But without that kind of incentive, it’s just very hard to get the investment needed,” Glick said. “Filmmaking is a high-risk venture, and so you need people willing to take the risk. And those credits are a way to incentivize investors.”
Events like the Big Sky Film Festival in Missoula draw crowds, and the expectation is Lone Peak will, too. Organizers of the Lone Peak event spent time in the Big Sky area, seeing if there was appetite in the community for the festival, Glick said.
“Pretty much all the way to everyone we talked to said, ‘Yeah, the community would love this,’” Glick said. “So we moved ahead. And it wasn’t until three months ago that we decided to actually pull the trigger and say, ‘We’re going to do it.’ So …it’s been a rocket ship since then.”
The festival will also include opportunities for those aspiring for careers in the filmmaking industry, including Chase Hall and Destini Vaile. They’ll get a chance to meet people and be mentees.
Hall is the son of a stuntman and said his dad has done stunts for major productions, including the “Magnificent 7” and “Yellowstone.” His interest came early.
“I was exposed to a decent amount of film sets,” Hall said on Thursday.
He said he was a little nervous about this weekend but excited for the mentorship. Hall is from Browning and graduated from Montana State University with a degree in film studies.
He said he likes to focus on the theme of identity, and a previous mentor observed the same in his work.
“They noticed my work kind of goes through exploring identity as a contemporary Native American, through the lens of surrealism,” Hall said.
Vaile recently finished her master’s of fine arts at the University of Montana. She’s created scripts for a couple of projects, including “Cereal,” which is about a 15-year old having a daily breakfast with her grandmother in the month before she died.
“It’s a bit autobiographical, but, you know, somewhat fictionalized, to just draw out the core of the story … I was staying with her a lot, and we would just have breakfast in the morning and talk about things,” Vaile said. “So it’s kind of just trying to capture that moment.”
She also enjoyed the time she spent at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe, New Mexico. There, she said, she had the ability to express a creative vision with the lens of her culture.
Her cohort at the University of Montana was all women, which she said was a good experience.
“It was just nice to experience that with just really capable, skilled women with, like, a vision,” Vaile said.
The Lone Peak Film Festival starts at 4 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 19, at the Big Sky Center for the Arts.
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